Walter Jon Williams, Implied Spaces (Night Shade Books, 2008)
Implied Spaces is an action-packed story written in an elegant and wryly-humorous prose style. If Dumas was alive and writing science fiction, he might well have produced a novel like Implied Spaces.
It begins like a tale from the Arabian Nights, with a lone swordsman walking through a desolate desert landscape accompanied only by his talking cat. The mysterious stranger soon finds himself drawn into the troubles of a stranded caravan which is being threatened by a cult of bandits who are known to leave no survivors. However, even as the mysterious swordsman assists in organizing a bold move against the bandits, a much darker threat is uncovered. For this desert landscape is only one incidental niche in a future multiverse facing wide scale destruction.
The mysterious stranger is Aristide, a computer programmer turned poet-adventurer. Aristide is one of the handful of human survivors from the original Earth after a series of futuristic conflicts left the human race hovering on the brink of extinction. It was this threat of extinction that drove the development of the technology which created the multiverse in which Aristide now lives. Yet Aristide can't help but feel dissatisfied with this brave new world for, in a multiverse where humans can be backed up and reincarnated in any form and in any world they choose, the sense of human striving seems to have given way to smug complacency.
It is Aristide's ennui (Williams actually uses the word "ennui," along with many other magnificent words), which sends him off to explore what he refers to as the "implied spaces," the marginalized cultures that spontaneously evolve on the fringes of the more intentionally engineered places. The deadly plan of a mysterious enemy who calls himself "The Avenger" may, however, lead to the extinction of all that Aristide holds dear, including the woman who has recently reentered his life.
If you're looking for cutting edge hard SF, Implied Spaces may not be your cup of tea. If you're looking for a story that takes some of the best ideas in cutting edge science fiction and then weaves those ideas together into a fast-paced story with stylish prose and witty dialogue along with some introspection concerning what we as humans want from our technologies, Implied Spaces should suit to a T.
Night Shade Books is here; Walter Jon Williams's blog is thisaway.
